On a visit to London last December, Ukraine’s new economy minister, Aivaras Abromavicius, joined a growing chorus of pro-reform commentators when he asked if Ukraine should frame its urgent request for aid as a modern-day Marshall Plan. The question is now posed to Karen Donfried, the first female president of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) — the permanent memorial to the postwar US initiative to aid Europe — as she begins a tour of her early 1900s brick townhouse in Washington DC.

Donfried, 51, took on the new role last April after a stint in charge of European affairs at the White House National Security Council. She now finds herself tasked with the GMF mission of promoting transatlantic ties amid growing tensions about how to respond to the Ukraine conflict.

]]>Singapore has appointed Mr Dominic Goh as its Ambassador to the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Mr Ong Keng Yong as its Non-Resident High Commissioner to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Monday that Mr Goh will assume his post on Jan 12 next year.
Mr Goh graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1990 with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours). He joined the ministry in October 1994 and was awarded the Singapore Government Scholarship in 2003. He obtained his Master of Arts in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA, in 2004.

]]>The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. Making sense of this information--Big Data--is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations, which is precisely why they're turning to Digital Humanitarians. This new humanitarians mobilize online to make sense of vast volumes of data--social media and text messages; satellite and aerial imagery--in direct support of relief efforts worldwide. How? They craft ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence. This book charts the spectacular rise of Digital Humanitarians, highlighting how their humanity coupled with innovative Big Data solutions is changing humanitarian relief for forever.

Mimi Alemayehou is an Executive Advisor and Chair of Blackstone Africa Infrastructure LP, a premier global investment and advisory firm. She is also a Managing Director at Black Rhino Group, a Blackstone portfolio company. Prior to joining Blackstone and Black Rhino, Mimi was appointed by President Barak Obama to be the Executive Vice President of The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the development finance agency of the U.S. government. Previously, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as the United States Executive Director on the board of the African Development Bank (AfDB). Prior to AfDB, Mimi was the Founder and Managing Partner of Trade Links, LLC, a development consulting firm. She also managed a multi-country trade project in Africa for the International Executive Service Corps, and was Director of International Regulatory Affairs for WorldSpace Corporation, a satellite telecommunications company. Mimi, an Ethiopian born naturalized US citizen and a mother of two, holds a Masters degree in International Business and International Law and Development from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Addis Standard interviewed Mimi on her career, past and present, her congressional testimony and her life as a mother.

Addis Standard -You left the Executive vice President post at the Overseas Private Investment Cooperation (OPIC), where you were the hand-picked choice of President Barak Obama, for Black Rhino Group and became its new Managing Director. But many people thought of OPIC as the climax of your career. Do you believe that?

Mimi Alemayehou - I have always believed that life is a journey of learning; there is no end to it until you are no more. While I absolutely enjoyed my job at OPIC during the last four years, I do not believe OPIC was the climax of my career. There is much more in my future. While at OPIC, I saw that many countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, were experiencing a different kind of transformation that I have not seen in my working career. A very important part of that transformation was the private sector and I definitely wanted to be a part of that sector, including moving back to the African continent to do it. I am currently serving a dual role as Executive Advisor and Chair of Blackstone Africa Infrastructure LP and also as a Managing Director of one of Blackstone’s portfolio companies, Black Rhino Group. Blackstone is the premiere global investment and advisory firm, managing almost $300 billion and extremely committed to developing large, highly development infrastructure projects in key markets in Africa through its infrastructure platform – Black Rhino Group.

Energy is a sector the government in Ethiopia has shifted its focus into as of late. Is there any plan by Black Rhino to work with the government of Ethiopia? Can you tell me about the rumored gas pipeline from Ethiopia to Djibouti that involved Black Rhino?

Black Rhino is now a portfolio company of Blackstone so it is owned by Blackstone. Black Rhino is currently in discussions with both the governments of Djibouti and Ethiopia on a potential refined products pipeline between Djibouti and Ethiopia. We have just completed a preliminary feasibility study and look forward to working with the governments of Djibouti and Ethiopia. It is still in the early stages of development; and for this project to succeed, it has to make economic sense for both countries and incorporated in their growth strategies. As you may know, Blackstone/Black Rhino has an important partnership with Dangote Industries, which was announced at the historical US-Africa summit in August 2014. We have committed to invest US$5 billion together in infrastructure projects.

Read the full article ]]>What Nahid Bhadelia remembers most from her trip to treat Ebola patients in Sierra Leone—12 days of working with desperately ill people in a country where the disease has killed thousands—is not being able to touch her patients.

“There were so many children who lost all their family, and they were in those units alone, some of them under five years of age,” she recalled. “You want to reach down and really comfort them, but all they can see is your eyes. You’re completely covered. You want to pet them, you want to caress them, but you have double gloves on.”

An epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center, the Brookline-raised Bhadelia, 37, has spent the past few years designing emergency protocols for Boston University’s controversial planned Level 4 lab. The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories would allow BU to study deadly viruses like Ebola in a controlled environment—a very different situation than the one Bhadelia faced in Sierra Leone, dealing with a fast-moving pandemic.

“It was physically grueling. [We] were throwing back Gatorade, Tang, and water,” says Bhadelia, who lost six pounds during those 12 days. “It’s so tough physically, but also emotionally. As physicians on this side of the ocean, we are not used to losing so many of our patients.”

We spoke to Bhadelia on the eve of her return to Sierra Leone. She has a third trip scheduled for January.

]]>Thomas L. Vajda (वायडा) assumed the post of U.S. Consul General in Mumbai on July 31, 2014. During his 23 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, Consul General Vajda served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar), as well as overseas postings in the Balkans, South Korea, and Germany. His service in Washington has been in the areas of East Asian and Pacific affairs, weapons removal and abatement, and human resources. Immediately prior to coming to Mumbai, he was the State Department’s Deputy Coordinator for Assistance to the Middle East, supporting efforts to coordinate all U.S. assistance to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in response to the Arab Spring and subsequent developments in the region. He previously served as the Director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a foreign assistance program supporting political and economic reform in the MENA region.

Consul General Vajda holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Stanford University and a Master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

]]>It’s official: Gen. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Dunford will be the 36th commandant of the Marine Corps.

Dunford, 58, was confirmed without objection by the Senate Wednesday night, just seven days after he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a hearing on his nomination.

The current commander of International Security Assistance Force, over all NATO forces in Afghanistan, Dunford fielded numerous questions about the conflict and drawdown and sustainment efforts in Afghanistan during his confirmation hearing.

Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy Kelly Sims Gallagher (MALD ’00, PhD ’03) will be on leave from Fletcher starting in June to serve in The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. While there, Professor Gallagher will serve as Senior Policy Advisor and work on climate change and energy policy. She will also work on international climate policy in close coordination with the State Department, concentrating on international negotiations.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy was established by Congress in 1976 with a broad mandate to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.

"I am proud that Professor Gallagher is being called upon to contribute to domestic and international climate policy. Her appointment is a testament to her strong expertise on energy and climate change issues,” says Admiral James Stavridis, Dean of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. “Fletcher is committed to contributing to real-world solutions to today's toughest challenges, and we are glad to support Professor Gallagher's efforts to contribute to climate policy in Washington."

Professor Gallagher directs the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) at The Fletcher School, as well as its Energy, Climate, and Innovation (ECI) research program. She is also Senior Research Associate in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where she previously directed the Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group. Broadly, she focuses on energy and climate policy. She is particularly interested in the role of policy in spurring the development and deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies, domestically and internationally

Professor Gallagher’s new book, The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China was just published by MIT Press in April 2014.

During Professor Gallagher's absence, Assistant Professor of Development Economics Jenny Aker will serve as Interim Director of CIERP. Serving as Interim Director of CIERP's ECI program will be Barbara Kates-Garnick, who joins Fletcher from the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where she served as Undersecretary for Energy in the Executive Office of Energy and advised on all energy matters impacting the state. Professor Kates-Garnick will also teach two of Professor Gallagher’s classes next year.

]]>President Obama is nominating Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan, to lead the Marine Corps as commandant, the Defense Department said Thursday.

…General Dunford is a Boston native and a combat veteran who led a regiment in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He would take over a Marine Corps that is making a transition from a focus on ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to its more traditional emphasis on rapid-strike amphibious operations.

… General Dunford has a master’s degree in government from Georgetown University and a master’s in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

]]>Dr. Karen Donfried takes over the leadership of the German Marshall Fund as its next president, succeeding Craig Kennedy who led GMF for over 19 years.

Donfried most recently was the special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the National Security Council at the White House. In this capacity, she was the president’s principal advisor on Europe and led the interagency process on the development and implementation of the president’s European policies.

Prior to the White House, Donfried served as the national intelligence officer (NIO) for Europe on the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community’s center for strategic thinking. As NIO, she directed and drafted strategic analysis to advance senior policymakers’ understanding of Europe. From 2003 to 2005, Donfried worked for the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning staff, handling the Europe portfolio…

…She has written extensively on German foreign and defense policy, European integration, and transatlantic relations. She has a Ph.D and MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Magister from the University of Munich, Germany. She holds a bachelor’s in government and German from Wesleyan University. Donfried is fluent in German.

For Cornelia Schneider, a typical workday might look like this: drive three hours through the jungles of eastern Congo to attend the opening of a new courtroom to prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence. Or arrange gasoline for a remote police station so officers can transport a suspect to court. Or organize humanitarian law training for soldiers at the front. Or set up poultry farming to enable prison authorities to feed their inmates.

“We’re here to assist the Congolese state,” says Schneider, MALD ’06. “We don’t portray ourselves as though we are delivering the services.”

Schneider, who goes by Connie, has spent the last 13 months based in Goma, a city at the crossroads of the war and chaos that has ravaged eastern Congo and its neighboring countries for decades. Her work with the UN Development Programme’s Access to Justice Project is helping to patch a creaky judicial system suffering from a lack of resources and a lack of legitimacy in the eyes of many. In doing so, Schneider, 36, draws on years of experience working in other war-racked places like Afghanistan, eastern Chad and South Sudan, as well as her deep determination to improve conditions for at-risk individuals.

In her capacity as UNDP Justice Project Lead, Schneider works with the Special Police for Violence against Women in Goma, DRC. (Photo credit: Benoit Almeras-Martino)

It’s a legacy of invaluable experience in conflict zones, and a testament of ability, tenacity and leadership. In recognition of her work, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy has awarded Schneider its inaugural Fletcher Women’s Leadership Award (FWLA). The award, to be given annually by the oldest U.S. graduate school of international affairs, was established in 2014 by the Fletcher Board of Advisors and the School’s executive leadership to honor outstanding women graduates who are making a meaningful impact in the world in the private, public and NGO sectors.

“Connie’s commitment to using her professional legal skills in service to vulnerable populations—often in extremely dangerous situations—epitomizes the spirit of the global Fletcher community,” says Elizabeth Powell (F62), Chair of the FWLA committee and member of the Fletcher Board of Advisors. “She was selected unanimously not only as an outstanding example of an emerging woman leader who is helping to create positive change in the world, but also for her efforts to help prepare a new generation of women leaders.”

Before her current assignment for the UN in the Congo, Schneider worked for the European Union’s Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL), helping to train Afghan police officers and improve coordination with prosecutors.

“How do you help a justice system to get back on its feet when it’s been neglected for so long, and professional education has been interrupted for decades; where do you even start?” she says of the complex situation she faced. Undaunted, Schneider went on to create the first-of-its kind training manual for cooperation among police and prosecutors and developed a course that successfully brought together 400 police and prosecutors from across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. As EUPOL’s acting Head of Rule of Law component, in 2012 she was the only female member of EUPOL’s senior management team.

During her three-year tenure in Kabul, Schneider also donated her expertise and energies to the development of The School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), an organization that runs the country’s first multi-ethnic girls’ boarding school, providing education and leadership opportunities to help its students foster growth in their country. SOLA has helped 37 students from 19 provinces obtain some $6.5 million worth of competitive scholarships abroad. The organization was co-founded by another Fletcher alum, Ted Achilles, MA ’62.

"I met Ted at a Fletcher dinner in Kabul one night, and he shared the story of 17-year-old Farahnaz, whose dreams of studying abroad were destroyed by the denial of her visa," said Schneider. She immediately became involved in the project, writing to U.K. schools on behalf of Farahnaz, who ultimately was awarded a two-year scholarship. "You cannot meet a SOLA girl without being deeply touched by her courage, commitment, pride and enthusiasm."

Schneider went on to serve as Chair of the Board of Directors of SOLA from January 2012 to 2013 and was instrumental in raising the organization’s profile and securing critical funds to support Afghan women’s leadership.

Schneider with SOLA's president Shabana Basij-Rasikh and a student at SOLA's inaugural honor pledge ceremony in 2012.

Schneider’s career path was anything but a straight line. A graduate of University College London, Schneider worked with multinational law firmFreshfields Bruckhaus Deringerfor several years, becoming a registered solicitor with the Law Society of England and Wales in 2004. She could have opted for a lucrative career as a commercial lawyer, and she was uniquely positioned to do so as a German national and a European lawyer. But later that same year, Schneider enrolled at Fletcher, where she focused on rule of law and Southwest Asia studies.

The training she received at Fletcher went far beyond the classroom, says Schneider. She spent time teaching at a women’s college in Dar Al Hekma, Saudi Arabia, that Professor of Diplomacy Andrew Hess had long been involved with. In addition, she spent the interim summer between her two years at Fletcher working for the UN Mission in Sudan as a result of the efforts of Professor of International Law Ian Johnstone (currently Fletcher’s Academic Dean), who is deeply involved in the UN and international organizations.

Schneider says everything she does these days is in many ways related directly to what she studied at Fletcher. Last year, when the UN Security Council authorized a UN intervention force to engage directly in eastern Congo, fighting the shadowy rebel group M23, she thought, “I wonder what Professor Johnstone and his students will be making of these developments.”

In the months after graduating from Fletcher, Schneider worked with different European justice and rights organizations, then spent a year with the International Committee of the Red Cross, helping to manage a base in eastern Chad and overseeing distribution of humanitarian aid there. After a short stint as public information officer for the International Criminal Court, she was hired by EUPOL, where she worked for more than three years, before moving on to her current post at the UN.

Last summer, fighting intensified between the M23 rebels and Congolese army troops. At one point, the rebels lobbed mortar shells into Goma from a hilltop position, destroying several houses and killing several people.

“That was a particularly intense period for everyone because it directly affected the city,” she said, rather than the battlefield areas away from the humanitarian hub. “It was a pertinent reminder of how violated you feel when war touches your home and your friends, and your freedom to move and to plan your future,” she reflects. “And we must never forget that, as foreigners, we can leave at any moment, whilst this is a reality that the Congolese have had to live with for decades with nowhere to go.”

While helping to improve the Congolese justice system is the overall mission of Schneider’s work in Goma, the focus on sexual violence has been particularly acute, she says. She routinely confronts cases of horrific crimes and suffering by women and girls, who in some instance have been literally branded—like cattle— by their attackers.

In that sort of environment, amid such suffering, depredation and poverty, it’s often hard to maintain your composure, she says, and not simply despair at the idea of helping people find peace and build prosperity.

“The trick is reminding yourself that you can’t personally solve all the problems. If you go out there saying, ‘I’m going to save all the rape victims there are or completely eliminate sexual violence,’ then you’re obviously setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration,” says Schneider. "You have to set yourself discrete goals in line with the more ambitious institutional objectives, bearing in mind that reform is an ongoing process; a journey and not a destination,” she says. “Sometimes, what keeps you going on an individual level is telling yourself, ‘I want to help that one person and make that one person’s life better.’"